Abstract:
The main purpose of this article is to study the changing meaning of the Don Chedi Memorial Ceremony which takes place in the area of Don Chedi Memorial, Suphanburi. This article also concentrates on how the people in Suphanburi see the ceremony after Thai Tourism Authority began to support the ceremony in the 1970s. This article tries to suggest that from said point, the Don Chedi Memorial was understood as place, which – in the branch of tourism- could bring high income for the province as well as for the country. Local people thus started to change their view on the Memorial from a place, which could be linked to a heroism bravery for a nation, to a place, where the past functions as a selling point. The Don Chedi Memorial Ceremony is thus, according to Eric Hobsbawm, an invented tradition, in which a history of a nation is turned in to a product with high income for the province.
